The High Cost of Faith
by MakeYouNotice
Summary: Faith is a precious thing that comes with a cost. After Chicago, it seemed like the public had lost it. Sam Witwicky has never had faith in much, but he knows that someone has to believe in the Autobots. After five years on the run and more deaths than they'd like to count, Optimus Prime is reminded just how high the cost of faith is when Sam has to pay it.


**So. Transformers: Age of Extinction. Anybody else more than a little frustrated by the lack of explanation for the many character disappearances? Yes? Okay, well, this is my fix-it.**

**Warnings for canon typical violence, slight spirituality, major character death and angst.**

**0o0**

**The High Cost of Faith**

**0o0**

Samuel Witwicky does not pray. He wasn't really raised to believe and he's not sure if he has the faith for it anymore.

So why is it that as he sits on the floor of his girlfriend's loft in D.C. he feels like a supplicant before an altar begging for forgiveness?

He'd pulled a worn old duffel bag from the closet and had spent the last hour just staring at it. He isn't sure what he's doing right now.

"Again?" Carly doesn't sound mad anymore and Sam thinks that that's the worst part, the apathy and exhaustion he hears in her voice.

Sam stands and turns to face her, holding out his hands. "Yeah. I'm sorry; I know you hate this, but-"

"No, Sam, I'm sorry." Her beautiful face pinches with something like determination and disappointment, like he's failed some test he doesn't know about. "I can't do this anymore. I thought I could, but I just can't. I can't take feeling like some soldier's wife and not knowing how long you'll be gone or even if you're coming back, Sam. I just can't."

He wants so desperately to be confused, to _not_ know what's going on, but it's been coming since the Autobots crashed back into his life. He can't say he's surprised because Carly is as fragile as she is beautiful and she can't take the things he does on a regular basis now, not after her brother. He just nods at her and turns back to his duffle bag, finally understanding why he had dragged the thing out. Somehow, he'd known she would make him leave today.

Sam wastes no time stuffing clothes into the bag and wiping his hard drive- no one needs to know the secrets he does. At the door, Carly hugs him and says, "Your stories should have stayed stories."

He tilts he head and stares at her intently. She squirms after a moment, not used to the serious, intense attention she was getting from her normally goofy ex-boyfriend. "Did you ever really love me?" he asks.

Her silence is answer enough.

They had lasted six months after Chicago and Sam thinks that she made it further than he was expecting.

0o0

The first year is the hardest in Sam's mind. Weeding out who's actually loyal to the Autobots and testing the bonds of trust formed at NEST is almost painful, but he knows it must be done.

It's slow going at first because most of their NEST friends are dead or in the hospital. The rare few have even been taken to Nellis Air Force base for 'reconditioning' (_they were trying to end it all in the place where it started_). When the government publicly broke with the Autobots early on, most of them were smart enough to go to ground. It's digging them back up later on that's hard.

Will is the first one to find them on his own with his ragged looking family. Sam's only sort of surprised because the other man had moved up the ranks steadily on more than looks alone. The Autobots are living in some abandoned junkyard in a small town in Middle America and Sam's camping there too because he's broke. Plus, his girlfriend kicked him out four months ago for spending so much time with the 'freaky robotic aliens', so he figures he might as well continue doing it. Their bed was beginning to feel too soft after sleeping on the ground so often, anyway.

Sam finds that he likes Sarah and Annabelle and the regret for dragging them into this follows quickly after that affection. Sam doesn't really just _'feel good'_ these days.

Epps follows a few days later and they start to realize that they can't all stay in the junkyard without being noticed. There's a warehouse not far from here and it's abandoned too. He wonders if this is their life from now on, moving from abandoned building to abandoned lot.

Sam can't bring himself to pray but he realizes that Sarah and Will have taught Annabelle to and she prays for all of them.

0o0

In the second year after the battle of Chicago, the CIA sets up an operation called Cemetery Wind. Their mission is to hunt down and silence any Transformer or ally that they can find.

By the time the Autobots realize that this new group means business, Charles Banes and the Wreckers are all dead.

They pick up a scarred Mikaela a week later. She may not have psychically changed in the seven years since Egypt, but there is steel in her spine now and an unnatural distrust of most humans. Sam wonders how they came to this, hunting down allies and friends to put down like rabid animals. And humans like to call themselves _evolved_.

Annabelle adds someone else to her list and Sam grieves for a man he only met once.

He still doesn't pray.

0o0

Sometime in the middle of the second year, the big group they were traveling in breaks up. When Bumblebee changes his alt form and switches his color scheme, it's freezing cold. It's not until they say a temporary goodbye to Optimus that Sam realizes he's lost track of the days.

It's Christmas Eve when they split up and early Christmas morning when they get the call that Epps is dead.

Sam passes a Catholic Church on his way to where Bee is parked and sees a family praying. They look happy.

He walks faster.

0o0

Eventually, Sam and Bee develop their own language, playing off Bee's usual way of speaking. Sam picks a song for Bee to listen to and the mech always catches his message. It works the other way too, but not quite as well for Sam because his memory has never been perfect. It only works for them because they knew each other so well.

Sam freely admits that it's saved both their asses before.

Privately, he wonders if Annabelle still prays for them and if that's the source of their good luck.

0o0

In the third year, Sam goes with Optimus again and it's not until he leads the Prime to the landing site of three new arrivals that no one knew about that he realizes that he just _knows_ things now.

Two days later, they are informed that Will Lennox has died and that Ratchet took Sarah and Annabelle to safety. He doesn't quite breathe again until he gets the affirmative from Ratchet several hours later that the girls are safe and in hiding. (_He berates himself and wonders why he didn't _know_ that this was going to happen._)

A day after that, Sam and Optimus take over the responsibility of dealing with Will's body. They can't have funerals if they want to keep from getting caught, so they build a pyre and say goodbye to a good man in the middle of the night like criminals. According to the government, they are.

Sam doesn't even know the meaning of faith now.

At the age of fifteen, Annabelle Lennox watches her father die. Even though she keeps her faith, she can't bring herself to pray.

0o0

Cemetery Wind has been refining its technique and by the end of the third year, all that's left is Mikaela, Mirage, Ratchet, Crosshairs, Drift, Hound, Bumblebee, Sam and Optimus. All the soldiers are dead, even the ones that opted for reconditioning and reassignment. Carly died in a car accident that looked faker than the original Godzilla, Sam's parents dead in a house fire. Even Leo and Simmons are dead and the list of Autobot casualties is too long and depressing to think about.

With no money, little chance to get food and no faith to speak of, Sam either has to figure out a way to live off energon or hope alone.

At least water is free.

0o0

The beginning of the fifth year brings more bad news and Sam would wonder how it can get worse, but he knows better by now.

Mikaela and Mirage made good partners and had spent the last two years flushing out various Decepticon hideouts. Mikaela dies just as the rest of the world rings the New Year in, taking three Cons with her. Sam makes himself be proud, since she isn't around to do it. Cemetery Wind takes out a distraught Mirage six hours later.

Bumblebee is closest and sent to set Mikaela's pyre while Optimus rages at the injustice on some stretch of Kansas road.

Sam just pats his dash when he's done and says quietly, "Keep the faith, Orion." Sam may not have any, but he knows Optimus needs his. They all do.

And as he goes on silently mourning his first love, he never once prays.

0o0

The single gunshot rings out loud and clear above the other machine gun fire and he doesn't feel it at first. A second shot rings out, following the first and _then_ he feels it- a chill and numbness he's only felt once before.

In that moment, Sam Witwicky knows he's going to die.

Only a yard away, a Peterbilt semi stalls and backfires. The ticking engine almost sounds like keening.

The air in front of Sam wavers and he thinks it's a heat mirage before the image of a dark haired man solidified in front of him. The Autobots don't tend to use their holoforms muc because of the hassle and energy drain. Without the ability to touch anything, they're pretty useless anyway, but the mech risks it all to bring it online now. It takes a second to sink in that Optimus looks worried. Sam would laugh at the ridiculousness if there wasn't a bullet in his stomach and another one in his leg. Speaking of them, he suddenly feels very dizzy. He's on his knees before he realizes. "Go," he says through a mouth that's filling with blood. Both shoots had been off target, but they were close enough to get the job done.

Optimus looks absolutely terrified, wishing his holoform could touch, wishing he could transform and carry the boy without fear of taking more fire. "Sam," he starts and he's not really sure what he can say. Even he knows the human is going to die.

Sam's teeth are coated in blood as he smiles and still manages to make it look gentle. "It's my time Optimus, not yours. You've got things to do and I'm tired. I don't know how you lived this long watching your brothers tear each other apart, but I can't do it. Please tell Bee that I'm sorry. Four words. Fire. Now go, Optimus. I'd hate to see you in the Well so soon," and he says it like a joke, like him beating Optimus to the Well is a _joke_, the end of some grand game.

Optimus is just stuck wishing his holo could cry.

There's the sound of helicopter blades in the air above them and Sam's eyes widened, weak hands going for the rifle he had dropped. "Run, Orion. Run," he says and it's not lost on either of them that those are almost the exact same words Optimus himself had used when he was dying.

A deep sob tore from his chest and his eyes burned even without tears and he brushed ghostly lips over Sam's dusty hair. "Brother," he whispers. Then he's gone.

As Optimus takes off faster than any semi-truck should go, Sam only closes his eyes for a second, loosing precious time to the useless wish that it didn't have to be this way. Then his eyes flash open and he uses the last of his strength to fire off a shot at the helicopter's pilot, internally thanking Will for the sniper training as the bird goes down in flames, but not before they get off a mortar round straight into Optimus's grill distressingly close to his spark. He only fishtails and speeds up more, changing form to a beat up old thing that doesn't look like it should still be able to run as he goes.

That is all that matters, though. That he gets away.

Sam had never been one for praying, but there was no such thing as atheists in foxholes. With that in mind, he scraped up what pitiful dredges of faith he had and prayed for his Prime, for _Optimus_ to get out alive and move on with his destiny.

Then, Samuel James Witwicky, three times savior of the world, dies at the age of thirty-three in the dirt outside some nameless small town in New Mexico with a smile on his face.

0o0

_Once, just after they went into hiding, Optimus heard Epps praying and asked Sam what he believed in._

_"I believe in nothing now. I can't believe in anything other than human cruelty anymore, I don't have the faith for it. If there is a Something out there, it's one hell of a sadist," he'd said. Twenty-eight and more jaded than half of Optimus's own troops._

_"We cannot live off faith alone," he rumbled. "But it helps."_

0o0

Cade Yeager has always prayed. He prayed for his father as he died of cancer, for his mother as she died of grief, for his would-be wife as she struggled through childbirth and for his baby girl when she was born premature.

His prayers rarely do any good.

He prays now as he connects the beat up semi to a working battery and jumps as the thing reacts. It electrifies all over, shaking before a recording comes on. _"Where- where is he?"_ says a pained voice.

Someone sighs and a heavy, deep voice says, _"He is in the Well,"_ and Cade thinks he knows the voice, except without all the stale terror and shell-shocked grief. There's a pained sounding electronic squeal and it's horrific like dying animal's keening before it just cuts out.

Then, the same voice again sounding far more sure if itself, "_Calling all Autobots_…" and Cade knows.

0o0

"I'll kill you!"

On Cybertron, prayer was not truly necessary since they walked upon their god every day and Optimus had never really been one of the truly devout, Prime or no.

"I'll kill you all!" and he knows he's not really in any shape to kill anything, but he's learned that the best way to deal with humans is with fear. If he can only get himself out of this tiny little barn and find some nice new abandoned place to rust in peace...

Only, this brave human named Cade Yeager offers assistance, has the gall not to look frightened and something about his raised hands and bobbing Adam's apple reminds Optimus of Sam and he can't hurt that. Even he hasn't fallen so far.

So he settles down in the middle of the barn with his weapons hot just in case and just watches the human and he sets to work. Eventually, Optimus realizes that Cade is murmuring a prayer under his breath and something about the intent of it- a prayer to heal and help and provide sanctuary- makes Optimus power down his cannons.

Sam had never prayed because he didn't have faith in anything out there to help him. Optimus couldn't blame him, since his own overabundance of faith had dragged him into this Pit of a life. He also can't judge because he never prayed either, only he lacked the belief that he would be heard and answered. Cade Yeager seems to pray even when there's no chance it'll help him and it warms Optimus, reminds him of the good of humanity- and the things he himself is missing.

And for just a moment as he has this epiphany, Optimus swears he can feel Sam's smile.

0o0

That night in the desert while Cade, Tessa and Sean sleep, Optimus rolls over to Bumblebee, long used to not being able to transform and stretch like he wants. "What was the message that Sam asked me to pass on?" He asked quietly. Over a year it's been eating at him and he still doesn't know.

The younger mech takes a minute before playing a recording of Sam saying the exact same message and explaining it. "_Four words. Fire. It's by Sleeping With Sirens. The part that always sticks to me is 'can't remain the same'. That's the four words. Sometimes, we just can't stay the same_."

They sit silently for another minute before Bumblebee uses his own voice to speak, "It was the one message I ever needed help with. Cybertronians don't change much and the concept was foreign. We adapt, but we don't really _change_. All Sam has done is change again and all we can do is adapt to it."

Wise words coming from such young sparks but then his pseudo-son had been raised to know more than someone his age should and Sam had always been just a little too smart. He takes a deep breath and tries to feel like he's really breathing. Sam was family to all of them and Optimus is not the only one affected. So he tries to both soothe his son and follow his brother's train of thought. "Simply put," he says with in a voice like grinding gears and lower than he had ever heard himself, "a new transformation."

And there's the faith he's been looking for.

0o0

Bumblebee watches Optimus Prime leave the planet with that one last word ringing in his processor.

He gathers what scraps of faith and hope and belief he can find in himself and turns that word into a prayer to a hopefully benevolent Something for his father.

_"Protect."_


End file.
